Looking further afield

Italian engineering companies could offer competitive engineering, procurement and construction services in the Mediterranean Sea, should activity pick up, but West Africa is currently the hot spot for contracts.

Litchendjili gas and condensate development topsides installed offshore Congo.  Images from Maris.

Founded in 1981, Milan based engineering firm Maris is currently completing a project offshore Congo and is bidding for more work with operator Eni in the region.

The firm’s core focus had been power plant and oil and gas onshore facilities until 2010 when it turned its expertise mainly to the offshore sector. It is providing a full engineering scope, from front-end engineering to detailed design and then follow-on services during construction and commissioning work, on two, 900-ton, Eni-operated gas platform topsides, Clara NW and Bonaccia NW, for gas production and treatment, with 1.2 MMcm/d capacity. They are due to be loaded out for installation in the Mediterranean Sea before the end of August 2015.

Maris also provided a full engineering scope for Eni on the Litchendjili gas and condensate development topsides, currently under commissioning, in the Marine XII Block permission, 15km offshore Congo, Africa. The contract included topside, jacket, piles, pre-drilling template and the design of temporary structures, i.e. grillage, sea fastening, for the sea transport of the platform. The facilities – eight production wells (six for gas and condensate, with some gas used for platform power, two for crude) will be unmanned and remotely controlled.

The associated gas, condensate and crude will be transported via a multiphase pipeline to a new onshore oil and gas treatment plant, be separated into two streams; the gas product will be directly delivered for power generation and the oil and condensate desalted and stabilized before delivery to Total’s terminal in Djeno. Hydrate inhibitor will be supplied via a pipeline piggybacking the export pipeline.

Maris has also provided design services for a 90-ton, 25-person accommodation module for Pemex to be bridge-linked to the Akal-G HA-AG-1 platform in the Cantarell field, Campeche, Gulf of Mexico.

Litchendjili gas and condensate development topsides CAD visualization.

Stefano Sangermani, commercial manager at Maris, says the firm is currently bidding on work for construction and engineering on other ENI platform projects offshore Congo. “We are hoping to increase business in Mediterranean Sea projects since we think that we could be competitive in this market area due to personnel’s past experience in offshore Mediterranean projects,” he says. “Africa is very interesting for us, even for onshore, however, we need to monitor the evolution of the political situation, especially in the North. We would also like to work on floating production, storage and offloading vessel modules.”

Massimo Baraldo, ICT manager, says the firm, which has about 80 in-house engineers, uses Hysys software for process simulation their engineering projects, producing full 3D design packages in particular using 3D PDS (Intergraph) or 3D PDMS (Aveva) , for a wide range of projects from process and mechanical engineering to electrical and instrumentation engineering, to hand to construction teams.